To lease or month to month?

Question

Linval T. · Answer

My choice is a yearly lease. I only give month to month is if there are doubts about the existing tenant.

Either way if they are not paying rent whether month to month or via a lease, you will need to invoke eviction to get them out.

Tim Booz · Answer

We do yearly leases, with 90-60 day notice of renewal/response. If they'd like to stay we renew again for another year. The only exception is if we have someone that wants to stay for a definite extras term, say 3 months - and it doesn't leave us with a vacancy in a bad time of year. Winter here in Northern NJ is not an ideal time to move.

I personally like the year lease option because it gives us relative peace of mind that we won't have to find new tenants for at least a year, hopefully longer.

Account Closed · Answer

I only used MTM agreements.  It's easier to change the terms, increase rent, kick them out, etc.  In CA, tenants can legally break their leases anyway, so you might as well terminate amiably.  I'm assuming your rental is in CA.

In CA, winter isn't as big a deal as in other places, so renting during the winter isn't normally a big problem - which is what other landlords often fear as far as MTM agreements.  The only month I had a hard time finding renters was December, because of the holidays, but even that wasn't impossible.

If your applicants are concerned the rent might go up if they don't have a lease, just write into the MTM agreement, that the rent will not change for the first year.  I would do this for nervous tenants.  They get the guarantee that their rent won't go up for a year, but I still retained the ability to change other terms or kick them out with 30 days notice.

Here's a legal article about breaking a lease and includes references to CA:

http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/free-books/...

The same publisher put out a great CA landlord book, that was my bible.  It includes all the forms you need, including a lease and month-to-month agreement:

http://www.nolo.com/products/the-california-landlo...

I used their forms.  It's easy to read and the forms and contracts are very easy for tenants to understand, too.

Loreen Flaherty · Answer

Thank you Sue, Linval  and Tim.  Your info and the related links are invaluable.  I'm very impressed with the way folks help one another via this site.  Lori

Tim Booz · Answer

It's definitely easier to have someone leave for non confrontational reasons in a month to month (selling, renovating, etc) but from an eviction standpoint there are a lot of variables. In NJ there are 19 different reasons you can evict.

However, in my experience most owners are asking about month to month leases because they're afraid of getting stuck with a problem tenant. I think that problem is solved through thorough tenant screening, and then reinforced with a well written lease.

To lease or month to month?

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